but, you know, if you're still bent on blowing this fat stack of cash, there's a couple of ways you could do it. ♪ ♪ or just go to e-trade and save it. boom. ♪ >> right now on draen mitchell reports, check your background. the president takes his campaign against gun violence to minneapolis. the city has broken new ground on background checks. why did the white house release this picture? did it backfire? >> welcome, mr. secretary. there are big changes at the state department as kerry steps in. >> here's the big question before the country andhe world and the state department after the last eight years. can a man actually run the state

department? i don't know. as the saying goes, i have big heels to fill. >> while defense secretary leon panetta steps up to take on chuck hagel's critics. >> that's pretty obvious that the political knives were out for chuck hagel. >> that's what you think it was? it was totally partisan? >>hat disappointed me is they talked a lot about past quotes, but what about what a secretary of defense is confronting today? what about the war in afghanistan? what about the war on terrorism? what about the budget sequester? >> and baltimore parties all night after the ravens' victory over the 49ers. the highest rated super bowl in history produced enough power for beyonce, but what triggered that 34 minute blackout?

>> as the nfl works feverishly to get the power back on. we have a moment as the players now beginning to realize this may be a little bit of a delay as different players are setting out on the field starting to stretch, starting to stay loose. really as bewilledered as the rest of the crowd here. >> did brotherly love prevail over sibling rivalry? >> going against these years, you had a feeling he would come roaring back. the team reflects his permit. they came roaring back. they have so much character. they're amazing competitors. it's a great football team. i'm proud of jim and very impressed with that team. >> good day. i'm andrea mitchell live in washington. right next door to baltimore, remember? as a new leader takes over at the state department today, president obama is in minnesota at this hour trying to build pressure on congress to support his gun proposals. will he be able to overcome deep-rooted opposition? joining us for our daily fix, chuck todd, msnbc news chief,

political director, and host of "the daily rundown" and "new york times" chief washington correspondent david sang ar. first to you, chuck, on guns. the president in minnesota. the white house making a very big push. the question as to why they had to react to the conspiracy they'rists who questioned his -- the white house comment about his skeet shooting at camp david zoosh well, they've always been what i would call overly reactive to they call it the beast, feeding the beast, and they mean sort of social media, the sort of advocacy media, when it's talk radio, whatever you want to call it, and this was just mother one of those instances where they felt that they saw a couple of articles that they thought were getting traction, and they thought, well, let's put out this photo, but, of course, even as david axlerod, they put it out four or five days later, and then it was, well, then why are you doing that? if you think it's slil to be doing it, why feed the beast? the whole incident is a total side show when you consider

what's really going on here, which is this -- he is trying to build mrekt support for at least something on guns. it does look like washington is moving around this background checks. >> an assault weapon ban is "unrealistic," is the democratic leader is not -- >> he support going to. my understand issing there is a movement. let it get a vote on the floor as an amendment to whatever comes out of the judiciary committee because people like max baucus who is up in 2014, maybe people like michael bennett -- i don't want to put, but some of the red or purple state senators from pro-gun states want the opportunity. think mark warner in virginia. to vote against a gun control measure. so that they have some credibility in their eyes to tell voters i'm pro-gun. i'm just for the background

check. >> cafeteria options. >> on foreign policy, we have a new secretary of state taking over today just as veep biden in his meetings with french president hollande in paris talk about the possibility of one-on-one bilateral talks with iran. let's take a look at what joe biden had to say. >> when and if the supreme leader and the iranians are prepared to discuss the essence of what is at the core of these embargoes, we're prepared to discuss. we're prepared to meet with them individually. >> iran, of course, a big topic in the chuck hagel confirmation hearings. a big source of dispute and wig conversations and negotiation with israel. john kerry over the weekend talked to simon peres and talked to abbas and also met hue. where do we stand now, and what is the timeline aring the different red lines with israel and with the possibility of one-on-one talks with iran? >> well, aun drae, i thought

that the most important statement that the vice president biden made was when and if. they haven't really had conversations even with the totally of the european powers, but -- and iran since june. many thought that there would be talks as soon as the election -- the presidential election was over, but we're obviously nearly three months out from that, and nothing has happened. there's discussion something might happen by the end of february. now, they're up against a couple of different deadlines here. one of them is the question of when iran will have enough of its sort of medium enriched uranium that it could race for a bomb. remember when prime minister net hur came to the u.n., he had that big sort of cartoonish version of a bomb, and the red line that he drew you would think the iranians would probably reach by the end of the spring or early summer, but the other big deadline here is that

in june the iranians have their own elections, and i think many in the administration are concerned that if they can't strike a deal fairly quickly and there's no indication that they would be able to, that it would get stuck in the election politics there where no one in iran would want to be looking like they're making any concessions to the west. >> at the same time we're all watching -- all eyes are on north korea getting ready to, we believe, do another nuclear test, an underground nuclear test. there are a lot of challenges facing john kerry as he takes over the state department. what about chuck hagel? chuck, you had leon panetta on "meet the press" this weekend, and martin dempsey, the chairman of the joint chiefs. let me ask both of you what kind of power that chuck hagel would have, assuming he gets confirmed? how does he move into this period where he has to really fight for resources from congress and also deal within the cabinet, deal with the white house? snoo that seems to be the real

question now. it's not if he is going to get confirmed. the political votes are there. another republican came on board over the weekend. roy blunt will vote no, but not filibuster. the votes are there to confirm him. that is not the question. the question is he going to have the political swagger, if you will, that secretary of defense immediate to both operate inside the pentagon, and that's -- you heard robert gibbs, former press secretary yesterday say it was a little disconcerting watching him give those answers. they made a strategic decision not to have a debate with those republican senators. trying to not start fights, but was he too passive? >> there was a way to push back. david sanger, he could have said i disagree with you about the surge. senator mccain, you're my great friend, but let's talk about what's really going on. we have 66,000 troops at afghanistan right now. he didn't pivot. he didn't push back. he didn't fight. david brooks, your columnist in "the "new york times"" suggested to chuck this weekend that he

should even go so far as saying to the president, mr. president, do you have second thoughts? should i withdraw? that's rather more than i would have expected at this point. >> you know, i think there were two remarkable elements to the testimony that former senator hagel gave. he seemed unprepared on basic issues. we were discussing iran before. he had a difficult time even articulating the president's policy that iran could not cane that you need to stop iran from getting a weapon. he tripped on that two different times even after being passed a note, but theb the second issue was why he didn't come back with senator mccain by saying yes, perhaps i was wrong on the surge. you may remember that senator hagel opposed the surge in iraq, but he could have said but while the surge worked, what it did was extract the united states from a war that senator hagel believes the u.s. never should have been in, so he didn't sort of have that kind of strong push

back. i think that truck made a very good point about what kind of sway he is going to have in congress. you know, the calculation of having a republican defense secretary as it was when bob gates remained as defense secretary for the first two years of the obama administration was to have someone there with the credibility to say, you know, this old cold war system can die. we don't need it. we can cut the budget here and put the money in cyber or put the money in some other activity that the united states considers relevant pursuing terrorists. right now it's not clear that he has enough juice with his own party that any of those arguments would necessarily work. i think that the white house has to be wondering did they buy the kind of authority from him and the kind of bipart sfwlan approach that they had hoped for? >> david, thank you very much. chuck, before i let you go, we've about the to talk about the game. >> i'm in purple. >> you're in your purple.

>> you're all ready. >> congrats to them. >> first of all, the highlights. two different games, i think. the fist half, the -- the first half -- >> preoutage sfwloosh had you the flacco first touchdown which was incredible. then you had jacoby jones, who i think he saw you were tweeting last night that jacoby jones, you thought, should have been the mvp. that 108 -- we thought it was 109 bshgs ut then it was 108. >> give him the record. >> that incredible history time or history-making return. >> sure. >> then the blackout. how do you figure the super dome and the blackout? >> well -- >> what was going through your mind? i was thinking cyber attack. >> you were going -- >> crazy. >> i feel bad because i just assumed the super dome, it's an old infrastructure that can't handle the modern technology of beyonce. >> it handled beyonce. >> you almost wonder -- >> did that use up too much juice? >> you do have to wonder. if you are the city of new orleans, you are upset.

you want to have these big things, and what i have been amazed at is how little the nfl has, the city has. everybody -- >> we still don't know. >> we're the finger-pointing here, and if you are the mayor of new orleans, you are mitch landrieu, i would be angry because that is reflective of the city. people thinking, super dome. >> this was supposed to be the victory lap. >> they don't know -- they can't do it blsh. >> did you think kaepernick was going to do it, and did you start rooting for the underdog in the second half? >> i was rooting for -- it's all about miami and i was rooting for ed reid. that was -- what a great game. >> no call on the holding. >> well, as i -- >> i think it was the right call. but they -- >> what's the deal that refs in a game like this in the last few minutes are not supposed to call obvious holds? >> well, i don't think it was as obvious as -- first of all, they were both -- a, they were both fighting for position. b, that was borderline uncatchable. i kind of -- i think it's a defensible subjective month

call. it is not an obvious decision. somebody who had a team once lose by a penalty, happy referee, miami in 2002 fiesta bowl, i'll never forget, i'm glad to see a referee let them play. >> well, what a night it was. it's another reason why we're all a little bit tired. >> a little tired. we need -- mondays need to be national holidays. mondays after super bowls. >> cable tv holidays. >> exactly. >> chuck todd, thank you very much. president obama has made climate change a top priority of his second term. to achieve hits goals he'll immediate help from republicans. especially lisa murkowski who has new proposals of her own. you were talking to some reporters on the hell. do you think this is another signal that our infrastructure is desperately under resourced and that we've got an energy problem? you know, a real crisis that is facing the country? what are your proposals? >> well, i tell you, when it comes to reliability, all you need to do is ask those millions

of americans who were focused on the game last night and all of a sudden it wasn't there. so as we look to energy and the key role that it plays in a secure economy, i think you immediate to look no further than the inconvenience that people felt last night. we rolled out an energy proposal this morning that we've been working on for well over a year, and the basic premise is energy is good. pretty simple. manager is good. it's necessary. it defines who we are as a nation. what i am working towards is a proposal that gets under the circumstances to a policy that is affordable, it's abundant, it's clean, it's diverse, and it's secure. if we can work towards all those things, we actually get to a better climate, a better environment. just a place where we are stronger as a nation, and where

we're cleaner environmentally as a nation. >> you are talking about drilling. when the president and certainly the incoming secretary of state who has been a leader on climate change is talking about doing something about greenhouse gases, haven't the storms, superstorm sandy, irene last year, haven't all of these recent storms and the fluctuations in temperature taught us if nothing else, that we have a real climate problem and that we have to deal with this here even if the rest of the world isn't going to deal with it in china and elsewhere? >> when you say i'm talking about drilling, think about what we're drilling for right now. think about where the boom is in this country. it's with natural gas. in order to access that natural gas, you do have to drill. what it has yaelded this country is an abundance of a resource that they read. it's able to bring our cost down and able to bring about jobs and economic opportunity that we wouldn't have had. how do we pay for the damage

caused by a sandy? how do we move towards that next generation of technology if we don't have the resources that we need? we can gain those through our own domestic production and we can put revenues towards a renewable manager deployment fund, towards mitigating some of what we are seeing from impact of climate. we talk about climate change being important for the future. we have to make sure that for the present our children are not in poverty that, we have the economic resources to do what it is that we need to do. so let's develop what we have, which is an abundance of natural resource and let's use that to get us to the energy of the future. that builds a cleaner climate. >> this is a debate over methane

that comes from the fracking from the natural gas debate that we'll have to continue, but before i let you go, i do want to ask you about chuck hagel because your vote -- you were on the committee. your vote is going to be clearly to -- mike johansson joined over the weekend, senator thad cochran from mississippi. are you prepared to support chuck hagel? >> well, in fact, i'm not on the committee, so i wasn't able to be there and be a participant when senator hagel spent eight hours before the armed services committee. what i have been doing over the weekend in between focus on an energy plan roll-out that we advance today is i caught many of the news snip ets, of course, that give me some concern. i'll be very honest with you. i have to acknowledge that what we have seen come out of the news have been some of the more dramatic moments, some of the moments where clearly senator hagel displayed a weakness. i have concerns about that. but i've got to do my homework. i intend to do just that.

>> carl levin had been counting on you as a yea and not a nay. you worked closely with chuck hagel before when he was in the senate. >> i did. >> do you think likely you can overcome your concerns? can he persuade you? have you had a one-on-one meeting with him? >> i had a very good one-on-one meeting with senator hagel some weeks ago. i had an opportunity to ask some pretty direct questions, and i'll be up front with you, in those -- in that exchange he did a lot to alay the concerns that i have. what troubles me now is in view of what i have seen, albeit somewhat truncated here, with his performance before the committee last week, i need to go back and gain assurance that there was a level of consistency, and right now i can tell i don't have that, so -- >> thank you very much, lisa. thank you, senator. >> thank you. >> up next, as john kerry begins

his role as secretary of state, how is he going to address the fall-out over benghazi, and still ahead, connecticut senator chris murphy takes on the nra. this is "andrea mitchell reports" only on msnbc. great, everybody made it.

we all work remotely so this is a big deal, our first full team gathering! i wanted to call on a few people. ashley, ashley marshall... here. since we're often all on the move, ashley suggested we use fedex office to hold packages for us. great job. [ applause ] thank you. and on a protocol note, i'd like to talk to tim hill about his tendency to use all caps in emails. [ shouting ] oh i'm sorry guys.

ah sometimes the caps lock gets stuck on my keyboard. hey do you wanna get a drink later? [ male announcer ] hold packages at any fedex office location.

john kerry has taken over the state department today reeling from a scathing review of how it handles security in the field in the wake of the benghazi attack that killed ambassador chris stevens and three other americans. >> so i pledge to you this. i will not let their patriotism and their bravery be obscured by politics, number one. number two, i guarantee you -- i guarantee you that beginning

this morning when i report for duty upstairs everything i do will be focused on the security and safety of our people. >> ambassador nicolas burns. the director of the future of depp lomasy project. great to see you. john kerry, a big change from hillary clinton. not so much in policy, but in sort of direction, stature, coming from the senate more so than from the political world. he has come from a world of foreign policy. will the white house be running the show? >> the secretary of state is superbly well qualified. he spent nearly 29 years in the senate. always a member of the foreign relations committee. he has been a life-long student of foreign affairs after living with his parents in germany after the second world war.

he is remarkably well connected to international leaders, and just knows these issues front wards and backwards. i think he is well prepared. you notice, andrea, that he called two sets of leaders over the weekend. many middle east leaders and also asian leaders. he is focused on those two regions. that's where he is going to be test veried early on. >> other secretaries of state have tried to engage much more verying russly, many of the, than hillary clinton did, in the northeast diploma as where i. she, of course, had the challenge of the arab spring, and that sidetracked a lot, but also the white house getting off on very bad foot with prime minister netanyahu. do you think committee fulfill his hope to really make a difference in terms of the israeli palestinian track, and as you point out, those were among his first calls this weekend. >> that signalled an interest that secretary kerry has in this conflict, and there are a lot of people who believe that the obama administration needs now

to get going with another diplomatic initiative. as you said, andrea, they started out way back in 2009 with senator george mitchell as their envoy in a very aggressive way, and then really didn't do much after that policy could not be sustained. they need to get back to that. they also need to attend, of course, the syrian civil war. further calls over the weekend by senator john mccain that the administration should do more to arm the rebels and help the rebels, and other people, of course -- from the munich security conference that was held over this past weekend, and then, of course, you have the news from iran that appears to be accepting the invitation to engage in talks with the united states and the other permanent members of the security council. there's a very big, very tough agenda ahead of this new swuf state. >> and, in fact, there was some reporting over the weekend that hillary clinton had tried to move the white house to be more aggressive on syria on arming the rebels, and that john kerry is actually more in sync with mccain on that and with a more

aggressive posture of leadership for the u.s. on syria. >> well, i think the administration is going to have to ask itself whether its present policy can work because assad is just strong enough to survive, and the rebels are not strong enough to win this battalions, and more than 60,000 people, many of them civilians, have been killed. a stalemate does not further the interests of the united states. i think they're going to have to reexamine this policy and perhaps look at options that would put us in a more aggressive position not to put american soldiers on the ground, but to begin to arm at least those factions of the rebel alliance that are truly democratic and not tied to terrorist circles, and there are real concerns there. it's a difficult prospect, but i think they have to look at that, and perhaps even reconsider the efficacy of a no flight sfloen that would take ka president assad's advantage over the rebel fighters. >> nicolas burns, thank you very much, ambassador. great seeing you again. >> thank you, andrea. >> up nergs, the republican

establishment strikes back. this is andrea mitchell reports, only on msnbc. at optionsxpress we're all about options trading. we create easy-to-use, powerful trading tools for all. look at these streaming charts! they're totally customizable and they let you visualize what might happen next. that's genius! we knew you needed a platform that could really help you elevate your trading. so we built it. chances of making this? it's a lot easier to find out if a trade is potentially profitable. just use our trade & probability calculator and there it is. for all the reasons you trade options - from income to risk management to diversification -

you'll have the tools to get it done. strategies. chains. positions. we put 'em all on one screen! could we make placing a trade any easier? mmmm...could we? around here, options are everything. yes mom, i'll place a long call to you tomorrow. i promise. open an account today and get a free 13-month eibd™ subscription when you call 1-888-280-0159 now. optionsxpress by charles schwab.

i'd like to thank eating right, whole grain, multigrain cheerios! mom, are those my jeans? [ female announcer ] people who choose more whole grain tend to weigh less than those who don't. multigrain cheerios

>> some powerful republicans are now trying to prevent another meltdown where senate candidates who are alienating their own party in divisive primaries. steven law, president and ceo of american crossroads, the organization behind this new -- are you connected, of course, with karl rove and the others who are very active in the last election cycle. what do you try to fix? what is the problem -- the republican problem you're trying to correct? >> our goal is to basically trying to institutionalize the william f. buckley rule when he said that the goal should be to try to nominate the most conservative candidate who can win, and that's going to be different in each individual state, but we saw looking back at this last cycle was some significant candidate quality problems. some of the mainstream candidates were like that. we had some really segment self-destructive candidates who ended up impacting ordinaries on the ballot too, like todd akin in missouri and richard murdock

in indiana. our goal is to see if we can try to find those candidates who are going to be discipline and can raise the money and be competitive in a general election. >> is iowa one of your top priorities snou in. >> i think almost any race where we see an opportunity either to compete for an open seat or go after an incumbent in a red state, and there are a number of those this election cycle, we want to make sure we find the most effective and competitive conservative candidate we possibly can. >> is congressman king too controversial? is he potentially going to have a murdock or an akin affect in bah with a away and elect a democrat to a seat that otherwise might go republican? >> at this stage it's very early in the game. we haven't ruled anybody or in or out, but but things we think that's important to do as part of the process is to vet candidates and to take a look at what they've said, take a look at the things that can be used against them that they'll have to answer to, and make sure that the candidates can also raise money, have message discipline and run an effective race where they can appeal to all manner of

voters when they have to do that in the general election. >> are you also going to have an impact in place like south carolina where there have been some kwfsh pushback against lindsey graham, but you have a senator who is a clear leader, party spokesman on military issues. do you get behind someone like lindsey fwram? do you stop a primary by taking place by putting your money where your mouth is. >> our goal will be, first of all, to reach out to all different groups on the right and see if we can build consensus about what our priorities ought to be and what candidates we can support. it seems to me that lindsay graham has been providing excellent conservative leadership for the state of south carolina and, you know, our resources really ought to be spent trying to find conservative nominees who can compete in places like arkansas against senator pry yore and other places like that. that's where we ought to be -- >> you have an open seat now in georgia. >> right. exactly. another one too, yeah. >> and at some point are you going to look at the presidential roster and what happened last time which with herman cain and a whole group of

other republican possibilities, participating so actively it all of those debates, projected an image of the party that was not ready for primetime, and where you had the mitch daniels and the others and haley barbour. >> other mainstream republicans saying, whoa, i'm want getting into this. >> that is a big concern. i think it's been a lot of discussion about it. i think a lot of that has to do with the -- the party's own rules and the way they structured debates. there's a lot of discussion about that, and i hope that a lot of that will solve the problem. whether we're focused on that a few years hence is probably too early to say. our focus right now is the senate and the house. >> thank you very much. fwood to see you. >> thank you. >> and up next, does the nra still wield all the power it once did in washington? and the voice the taliban tried to silence. the inspiration and recovery of mulala. for the first time today she is speaking out in her own words. this is an dre mitchell reports only on msnbc.

nobody insures more bikes than progressive. do you guys ride? well... no. sometimes, yeah. yes. well, if you know anybody else who also rides, send them here -- we got great coverage. it's not like bikers love their bikes more than life itself. i doubt anyone will even notice. leading the pack in motorcycle insurance. now, that's progressive. call or click today. aarrggh!

♪ i don't wanna be right [ record scratch ] what?! it's not bad for you. it just tastes that way. [ female announcer ] honey nut cheerios cereal -- heart-healthy, whole grain oats. you can't go wrong loving it. some brokerage firms are. but way too many aren't. why? because selling their funds makes them more money. which makes you wonder. isn't that a conflict? go to e-trade. we've got over 8,000 mutual funds and not one of them has our name on it. e-trade. less for us. more for you. in our headlines today,

funeral services are being held today in new york city for the long-time mayor ed koch at a manhattan synagogue. his coffin was draped with the new york city flag as president bill clinton led other political figures in praising the street-wise mayor for his political accumin. >> i don't think i ever debated, discussed, agreed with, argued with anybody in this line of work who had a better feel for the impact of what people in government did on the real lives of people. we miss you so much because we all know you're doing a lot better because you lived and served. >> in nevada fidel castro maid an extended public appearance voting in cuba's parliamentary elections. his first appearance many n more than two years. the 86 wrerld-year-old had voted

from his home in three previous electrics since he was hospitalized back in 2006. in the u.k. researchers say that they have actually identified newly discovered skeletal remains found under a parking lot as those of the much revive vialed king richard iii who william shakespeare immortalized, a horse, a horse, i my kingdom for a horse. they were found not far from where king richard was killed in the battle in 1485. dna from the skel can matches a sample taken from a distant living relative of richard's sister. the discovery could lead to a reassessment of king richard's violent but brief reign and whether he was actually a victim of character assassination from the tudors who succeeded many him. >> the pakistani teenage per shot in the head by the taliban stopped her crusading for the right to educate girls is now speaking out for the first time since the near fatal attack and two more surgeries only this

weekend. >> today you can see that i'm alive. i can speak. i can see you. i can see everyone, and today i can speak and i'm getting better day by day. this is a second life. i want to serve the people, and i want every girl, every child to be educated, and for that reason we have organized mulala fund. >> northbound's kier is in birmingham, england, outside the hospital. kier, this is remarkable. it is just a miracle of her spirit, of the doctors who have helped her, the family who has been with her. she's now also the youngest nominee for the nobel peace prize. what are you hearing from the medical team around her about her prognosis? >> that's right. incredible. she is still in the hospital behind me recovering. what an amazing recovery.

as those comments on camera, the first since she was shot by the taliban, attacked simply for campaigning for the rights of young women to be educated. in those comments she has such poise and yet at the same time seems so young. one doctor talking about how she would make adult decisions about her treatment and, yet, on other occasions he would come to the room to find her playing cards or playing games, and after that operation even afterwards 24 hours later she gave another interview in which, again, she had such poise. she said, andrea, i can walk and talk a little bit. it doesn't seem like a very big operation to me. in fact, of course, it was another big operation. five hours long, including having the smashed part of her skull replaced with titanium and sophisticated hearing aid put in in order to help her hear because she had been deaf in one side by that bullet. >> kier simmons, thank you for the update on mulala.

here at home the heart break of the gun massacre in newtown, connecticut, even touched the super bowl festivities last night as 26 children from sandy hook elementary sang "america the beautiful in the super dome. ♪ o beautiful for spacious skies for amber waves of grain ♪ >> and joining me now is connecticut senator chris murphy. senator, thanks so much for being with us. i know that you have been studying the nra's insolence and whether they can help defeat candidates as they claim. tell us what you have found so far because perhaps their power is larger than the reputation -- or not as large as the reputation i should say. >> well, sure. first of all, those kids just did an amazing job last night. we're so proud of them back in connecticut. i've spent basically the last

month and a half in sandy hook, and the spirit that that community shows every day is -- well, it inspires all of us and inspears me to try to make sure that people down here who want to do the right thing and pass commonsense gun legislation have the opportunity to do it. over the years, as you know, andrea, a lot of folks who wanted to step up and renew the assault weapons ban or take on the issue of background checks didn't because they thought there was a big political price to pay from the nra. well, what we've learned in taking a look ae at the results from the last several elections is that the nra's political potency is not what it used to be. in fact, in 2012 in the 16 senate races that they put money into, they lost 13 of them. in all of the states with a lot of nra members that they tried to defeat president obama in, like florida and pennsylvania and ohio, they lost and lost big, and so it just isn't the case like it may have been two decades ago that if you take on the nra, mrs. a political price

to pay. in fact, they do a lot worse than they ever did before and a lot worse than many other groups do out there in the electoral space. so i think that people are going to be willing to vote for commonsense gun legislation, in part uz because people are seeing that the nra is a bit of a paper tiger compared to their reputation down here. >> what do you think makes them so powerful? >> you know, i think people remember 1994, and, you know, they claim that they took out member after member who voted for the crime bill that year that included the assault weapons ban when, in fact, if you go back and look at the 1994 elections there were a million different factors as to why so many democrats lost, but for whatever reason the political post script on that year was that if you vote for the assault weapons ban, then you lost your seat in 1994. it probably wasn't true then, but it added their legend. when you look at the data, their success rate september there. they got a 1% return on their investment in elections this

last time around, and when you add that on top of this kind of bizarre behavior that they've had since the newtown shooting, whether it was the commercial they ran against president obama featuring an attack on his kids or they are claim that we should have a list of everyone with mental illness in this country in order to stop gun violence, i think they have marginalized themselves much more than maybe people thought in this debate. >> again, thanks to you, senator murphy, and i know newtown was your district when you were a member of congress, so this is very close to the heart, close to home. thank you. >> thank you, andrea. >> and coming up next, getting to know john kerry. you're watching andrea mitchell reports only on msnbc. [ kitt ] you know what's impressive? a talking car. but i'll tell you what impresses me. a talking train.

this ge locomotive can tell you exactly where it is, what it's carrying, while using less fuel. delivering whatever the world needs, when it needs it. ♪ after all, what's the point of talking if you don't have something important to say? ♪

five days later, i had a massive heart attack. bayer aspirin was the first thing the emts gave me. now, i'm on a bayer aspirin regimen. [ male announcer ] be sure to talk to your doctor before you begin an aspirin regimen. [ woman ] learn from my story. >> i'm waurpding around the building later and i sort of wind up in your office, it's not because i'm there for a meeting. it's because i'm lost, and i need directions. so just tell me who you are, tell me what you do, and tell me

where i am. >> the new secretary of state john kerry as he arrived today on his first official day on the job and joining me now is matt pfizer, white house correspondent for the boston globe who had a lot of years put in the massachusetts with the boston globe covering john kerry, and you have the tour of massachusetts, his fair well tour last thursday. >> yeah. >> i think it was where he said good-bye to people in small towns and he let his hair down a little bit with you about when he actually got the job offer. >> yeah. i mean, he told us that it was a week before susan rice got out of -- took herself out of contention for the secretary of state's job. it was with a personal call between obama and carriry. which i think raised eyebrows given the timing of that. i mean, we thought it was much later than that. >> well, in fact, as a result of my calls to follow-up on your story, we had a response from the carry folks who said that private discussions are best kept private in my imprecise

overly casual answer about timing confused things. lou many private conversations over a long and bezy period approximate for were, i knew the president was interested in the possibility of my serbs as secretary of state, but he did not formally offer me the job in late september. which also reflects his openness as a person of the senate and someone who has run for president, he is so used to dealing with reports. he gets comfortable, but he is also very quick to respond. >> he was very comfortable in the interview. i mean, the question that spurred his answer was just sort of when did you hear, how did you find out that you had been offered the job, and that -- his response was that the president called him a week before. >> and i don't know if we have the pictures of it, but today when he arrived at the state department, he then after his brief remarks walked through and shook hands with everybody. he was very much comfortable and also reaching out and trying to reassure people this is the new leadership. that you have the celebrity of hillary clinton, but i think people were really feeling someone -- he waived the

passport that he had as a child with his mother and father and told an engaging story about having taken his bike -- used his diplomatic passport as a 12-year-old to go in to then east berlin, the wrong side of the wall, and going around and seeing what it looked like on the, you know, the soviet side. >> yeah. >> of the iron curtain, which was the iron curtain then. 57 years ago. he said the tabloids now could say kerry had early communist tendencies and said as a child he noticed the stark difference between freedom and what he saw on the other side and his father found out, of course, and grounded him and took the passport. >> revoked the passport from him. >> that was a very engaging story to enlist and identify with all of those people in the foreign service community there, as well. >> yeah. i think this moment for kerry is interesting. it is a job he's wanted for sometime and he felt comfortable

last week and sometimes un-kerry-like and lingering talking to rank and file politicians in massachusetts and a bit of nostalgia leaving that job and entering the new jb. >> you have to watch from both ends and see if the white house and the national security council lets him weigh in on policy, how much of a leash he's on because they have a way of controlling things out of the white house as hillary clinton discovered. >> i think john kerry's hoping to take the first trip i think sometime in the next couple of weeks so we'll be eager to see where he chooses to go and hoping to have on foreign policy. >> i'm betting on the middle east myself. >> yeah. >> thank you very much. good to see you. >> thank you. >> what political story makes headlines in the next 24 hours? that's next. nerist eye and lasho the cream smooths the look of lids... softens the look of lines. the serum instantly thickens the look of lashes. and the award for wow eyes in just one week goes to you.

campbell's has 24 new soups that will make it drop over, and over again. ♪ from jammin' jerk chicken, to creamy gouda bisque. see what's new from campbell's. it's amazing what soup can do.

which political story makes headlines in the next 24 hours? jonathan capehart joans me now. >> andrea.

>> i want to ask you about sports because i love it when you do sports. >> super bowl! >> talk about guns, though. >> okay. >> the president is minnesota and next 24 hours this is beginning to gain traction. white house pushing hard against any suggestion as jay carney was on air force one any suggestion to give up on the assault weapon ban. >> right. the president is to speak around 2:30 indianapolfrom minneapolis. this is the out of the beltway trips to keep pressure on congress to get things done on gun violence. >> we will have to watch that and carry it live presumably in the next hour. and we will talk to you tomorrow, i hope. thank you very much. >> great. thank you. >> and my colleague tamron hall has a look at what's next on "news nation." tamron? >> hi, andrea. the president will be live in the hour for the first time president obama taking his message on gun control out of

washington making live remarks in minnesota. about 30 minutes from now. bringing it to you live comes as "the wall street journal" reports senate democrats are working on a ban. we'll carry the president's comments. plus, details on a "the new york times" that says karl rove is taking on the tea party. an we're getting new information about the investigation in to the blackout during the super bowl. what happened? and what they're looking at this hour. come on. nowadays, lots of people go by themselves. no they don't. yeah... hey son. have fun tonight. ♪ prom! [ laughs ] ♪

♪ ain't nothin to me ♪ back against the wall ♪ ain't nothin to me ♪ keep you down and make you crawl ♪ ♪ ain't nothin to me ♪ cut you down when you feel tall ♪ ♪ ain't nothin to me ♪ ain't nothin to me ♪ ain't nothin to me [ crowd murmurs ] [ cheering ] hey! ♪ ain't nothin to me ♪ ain't nothin to me ♪ [ howls ] ♪ that's a good thing, but it doesn't cover everything. only about 80% of your part b medical expenses. the rest is up to you. so consider an aarp medicare supplement insurance plan, insured by unitedhealthcare insurance company. like all standardized medicare supplement plans, they help save you up to thousands in out-of-pocket costs. call today to request a free decision guide.

with these types of plans, you'll be able to visit any doctor or hospital that accepts medicare patients... plus, there are no networks, and you'll never need a referral to see a specialist. join the millions who have already enrolled in the only medicare supplement insurance plans endorsed by aarp... and provided by unitedhealthcare insurance company, which has over 30 years of experience behind it. with all the good years ahead, look for the experience and commitment to go the distance with you. call now to request your free decision guide.

hi, everyone. i'm tamron hall. "news nation" following breaking. first time president obama is taking his push for stricter gun laws out of washington, d.c. right now, we're about 30 minutes away from the president speaking at the first big follow-up since announcing i